Gary Marcus

Rank 19 of 47
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Score 64
5/10/2025, 12:42:24 AM
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In reply to:
Gary Marcus
@GaryMarcus
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55d
@Wasgo @littmath @polynoamial This is perhaps a good review of the various claims that have been made

https://cameronrwolfe.substack.c…
Cameron Williams
@Wasgo
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55d
@littmath @GaryMarcus @polynoamial There’s two entirely different meanings of AI scaling laws. OpenAI covers theirs in their papers and it’s not about model performance, it’s about fitting vs overfitting. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2001.08361

The general public talk about scaling laws as performance and there’s no definition.
Daniel Litt
@littmath
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55d
@GaryMarcus @polynoamial I’m not sure I understand. Is the claim that scaling laws were predicting faster than logarithmic returns to scale, or that actual returns to scale are slower than logarithmic?
Gary Marcus
@GaryMarcus
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55d
@littmath @polynoamial as i understand it the “chinchilla laws” no longer hold, and people no longer got the return for increases in compute and data that they were expecting per those alleged laws (but instead got diminishing though non zero returns).
Daniel Litt
@littmath
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55d
@GaryMarcus @polynoamial Is it actually the case that scaling laws failed? Or is it that the claim was that scaling was logarithmic, so eventually the returns to scale aren’t worth it?
Gary Marcus
@GaryMarcus
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55d
👇 No, @polynoamial, we didn’t real have *laws* for pretraining; they held for a while, until they didn’t. Which is why we still don’t have GPT-5 despite many expensive shots on goal.

What we had was scaling generalizations, that held for a while, and eventually failed.

Since

The statement is part of a technical discussion on AI scaling laws, specifically addressing the quality of claims in the technical literature compared to other sources. It engages with public discourse by contributing to a debate on AI research and the interpretation of scaling laws.

  1. Principle 1:
    I will strive to do no harm with my words and actions.
    The statement does not appear to cause harm with words or actions. It neutrally comments on the quality of claims in the literature.
  2. Principle 4:
    I will engage in constructive criticism and dialogue with those in disagreement and will not engage in personal attacks or ad hominem arguments.
    The statement engages in constructive criticism by pointing out the prevalence of sloppy claims elsewhere, without resorting to personal attacks or ad hominem arguments. [+1]